For now, tiny Redfield remains the snowiest spot in the Great Lakes
Steve OrrMidway through the winter, the Oswego County hamlet of Redfield remains the snowiest spot in all the Great Lakes.
They broke 300 inches — yeah, that's 25 feet — Thursday night.
Redfield last winter won the first-ever Golden Snowdrift award, which the Democrat and Chronicle bestows on the Great Lakes community with the most snow.
Because each of the five Great Lakes can spin off prodigious quantities of lake-effect snow, the region is one of the snowiest in the world.
Last season, Redfield's indefatigable weather observer, Carolyn Yerdon, measured 350.5 inches of the stuff. The runners-up, Osceola in Lewis County and Houghton in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has 303.9 and 285 inches respectively.
Who will get the most snow on the Great Lakes this year?
This season, communities in Michigan that sit in the snow belt near Lake Superior jumped off to a quick Golden Snowdrift lead in November. Places in Wisconsin and the Canadian province of Ontario got early snow as well.
New York snow-belt locales lagged far behind.
Then Erie, Pennsylvania vaulted to the top and garnered national headlines in late December with five feet of snow in two days. The city on the Lake Erie shore set its all-time seasonal snowfall record earlier this week.
But Redfield has come charging back. Yerdon measured nearly 15 inches of fresh lake-effect snow on Thursday, pushing the seasonal total to 307 inches.
Just like last season, Redfield has built a wide lead over the competition.
As of Thursday, Houghton, Michigan was second with 227.2 inches. A neighboring Lake Superior town, Calumet, had 207.5 inches and Lacona in Oswego County had 186.3.
Erie, PA sat in 14th place with a relatively paltry 152.1 inches. The closest Canadian competition, Wiarton, Ontario near Lake Huron, had recorded only 117.7 inches.
The Golden Snowball Award
The five large upstate New York cities vie each winter season for the venerable Golden Snowball award, which gave inspiration to the Democrat and Chronicle's Great Lakes-wide competition.
This season, like most seasons, Syracuse has a solid lead in the Golden Snowball race.
The Salt City had 103.7 inches of snow through Thursday. Rochester was second with 78.8 inches.
While Binghamton won the prize last year in an upset, Syracuse almost always captures first place because its location places it in the path of more lake-effect snow bands than the other four cities.
Rochester last won the Golden Snowball in the screwy winter of 2011-12, when temperatures were far above average and snowflakes hard to find. Rochester got 59.9 inches of snow that season, its lowest total in a decade.